Another alchemical bomb slipped into one hand, and he lofted it high over the centarch’s head. She reacted as he’d hoped, sending a blast of fire to intercept the thing, and it detonated with a sharp crack that staggered them both. In the brief moment of distraction, Gyre drew his blades, long and short. The long blade slashed at the centarch’s face, and she had time to bring her haken down to parry.

Steel met deiat, and the metal melted away in the fury of the power of creation. But Gyre was already dropping the weapon, fading to the side, his small blade coming up to bury itself in the centarch’s belly.

Blue energy flickered around him, and the weapon stopped, an inch from her shirt, as though it had struck solid steel. For a stunned moment, Gyre was still. The centarch whirled to face him, long red hair swinging behind her, and to his watering eye something in her face looked almost familiar.

Then, as the haken came around—

Maya?

Maya

The warehouse was everything she’d imagined and more. Enough unsanctioned arcana to hang Raskos, she was certain. For a moment, staring at all of it, she wasn’t sure what to do next.

Movement along one of the aisles answered that question. Two dark-clad figures, hurriedly stowing something away. Her fight with Guria must have warned Raskos’ people to try to hide whatever they could. Maya found herself grinning as she strode forward. Too late.

Power flowed through her, pulsing with every beat of her heart. The Thing seemed to pulse in time, blood warm. She’d never done anything like this before. Jaedia had taught her to stay in control, to be precise. Now deiat seemed to be boiling under her skin, straining to be released. One of Raskos’ spies confronted her, and she blew his alchemical tricks away with a wave of flame. When his companion opened fire with a blaster, Maya cut loose with a blast of fire that brought down a wide section of catwalk.

She wanted to laugh as the man in black scurried away from her. She stalked after him, half expecting the ground around her to blaze with the power of her passing. Maya had always known that deiat was the raw fire of the sun, the power of creation, but she’d never understood it as powerfully as she did now. She felt like the sun itself given human form, smashing aside any human obstacle with a flick of her finger. She felt like a god.